Pastoral as Plough

you think you want everything fastermore now here now this and her now

how long a crystal takes to will itself
that the crush is what makes it

conduit of centuries screaming
too slow to be heard

so you lay on her cold body
and that is what makes it

this is what makes the flint spark
how fire lies in the dirt

handed down to men in a story
made by men what burns

any more I have given you my ashes
a wasted softness I made myself

Caroline Crew is the author of several chapbooks, and her full-length collection, PINK MUSEUM, will be out from Big Lucks in 2015. Her work appears in Conjunctions, Salt Hill Journal, and Black Warrior Review, among others. She’s online here: caroline-crew.com.